As technology advances and working habits change, it is very common for people to be reachable by multiple phone numbers. For example, they may be reached by their home phone number, office phone number, or mobile phone number. In many cases, the caller has no idea which number can reach the person to be contacted at the time of making the phone call. The only available option for the caller is to dial a different number if the call is not answered. This can be very inconvenient especially if the caller is using a calling card to make the phone calls. In some cases, more than 20 digits need to be dialed to make a phone call when using a calling card service.
Speed dialing is a convenient feature that is available in most phone stations to ease the dialing process. When using this feature, the caller does not need to dial the actual phone number of the person to be contacted, and the number of keys that needs to be entered is much less than the number of digits of the actual phone number. However, the caller still needs to dial the first speed dialing code and then wait for the answer. If the call is not answered, then another speed code must be dialed, and so on.
New advanced call forwarding services such as “follow me” or “find me”, as offered by RingCentral and Google Voice (formerly known as GrandCentral), can help save the caller from dialing multiple phone numbers in order to reach the person to be contacted. With such services, a separate phone number is given to the person to be contacted by the phone service provider such as Google Voice. The person to be contacted has to pre-program a list of phone numbers that he/she can be reached on the phone system of his/her service provider using this given phone number, generally through a Web site provided by the service provider. When another person wishes to contact this person, this given phone number is called. The phone service provider then forwards the call to the first phone number on list that is associated with the given phone number. When the first phone number on the list is called and not answered, the next phone number on the list will be called and so on. The caller does not need to dial any additional phone numbers. This will help the person to be contacted avoid missing important phone calls.
Unfortunately, not every person to be contacted has such services available. As mentioned above, the service is associated with the person to be contacted. The caller has no control of such service. If such service is not available or enabled by the person to be contacted, the only option for the caller is to dial all the phone numbers associated with the person to be contacted one at a time until the person to be contacted is reached.
It is desirable to enhance the speed dialing feature to allow the caller to reach the person to be contacted in a simpler dialing procedure. The prior art does not present a solution for a more convenient dialing procedure to reach a person to be contacted with multiple phone numbers.
The present invention provides a method and apparatus to allow a phone user to program a more convenient dialing procedure to reach a person to be contacted with multiple phone numbers using a pre-selected dialing algorithm selected by the user.